Analytic psychotherapy has changed and developed since the time of Freud, with increasing emphasis on the therapeutic relationship. A recent survey of my former patients — seen over a period spanning five decades — highlights 9 particular ingredients that help place the relationship at the heart of successful therapy.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to living the life of our dreams is not fear or lack of ability, but simple, mundane habits that keep us in a holding pattern, waiting for nothing in particular.

Therapists rub their professional shoulders against a plethora of other helpers and caregivers. Often in session I feel like a professional organizer as well as a therapist.

The fear that opportunity has passed us by, perhaps forever, is among the most painful feelings we can ever experience.

Online therapy is a fertile mix of the comfortable and uncomfortable. You can have a session in your pyjamas, and never look your therapist in the eye. There’s nothing wrong with comfortable…or is there?

When I work with clients on a specific problem, I have disciplined myself to ask “what solutions have you tried so far?” Their answers are often enlightening.

Beginning in the 1950s, Albert Ellis laid the foundations for a major portion of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) with his colorful descriptions of negative thought patterns, descriptions that remain useful to the present day. Yet these venerable tools also have their limitations and misuses.